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<h2>The Two Restore Interfaces</h2>

<p>Both interfaces accomplish the same three steps.
The steps are to select jobs to restore from, give the user the
opportunity to select files/directories, then indicate details such as
the host and path to restore to and trigger the job to run.

<h2>The Standard Restore Interface</h2>

<p>Start the standard restore procedure by pressing the restore button
in the task bar.  There are also two options in the joblist context sensitive 
menu to start a restore.  They are Restore From Time or Restore From Job.

<p>This restore method is intended as a high performance option.
It is a server side process.  These interfaces assist the user in utilizing the
text based restore capabilities of the standard console.  It interprets the text
to display the information in a way that simplifies the restore procedure.

<p>The Opening interface allows the user to choose selection criterion to
inform the server how to determine the set of backup job ids to use in the
restore.  This best possible set is he most recent full backup, the most
recent differential backup done since the most recent full, and all the
incremental backups done since the most recent full or differential.  Then the
server uses this set of jobs to create a file structure that is the
most recent version of each file found in this job list.

<p>The second interface allows the user to browse this file structure and
choose the files and directories to restore.  This is done in an explorer
type interface with a directory tree on the left.  In the right pane of a
splitter is a table showing a list of files and directories that are the
contents of the directory selected in the left pane.  The user can mark and
unmark either with the buttons on the top or by double clicking on the check
mark icon to toggle whether an item is selected or not.  Double clicking an
item which is a directory on a part of the table which is not the check icon
opens that directory.  Clicking 'OK' completes the selection process.

<p>The third step is the Restore Run interface.  It's purpose is to allow the
user to inform the bacula server details of the host and path to restore to, the
replacement rules, when to restore and what priority to give the restore job.

<h2>The Version Browser Restore Interface</h2>

<p>This restore interface is <b>NOT</b> intended to perform major restores of directory
structures with large numbers of directories and files.  It should work, however
it is a chatty interface.  This is due to the number of sql queries made of the server
which is proportional to the number of files and directories selected plus the number of
exceptions to defaults selected.  It <b>IS</b> intended to allow the user to browse for 
specific files and choose between the different versions of those files that
are available in the catalog to restore.

<p>The interface contains a horizontal splitter.  The bottom pane contains
some controls for the interface.
The top portion contains a vertical splitter with 4 panes for viewing the 
cataloged information.  The left pane is for viewing and further sub selecting
of jobs.  The second pane is for viewing the directory tree.  The third is for
viewing a list of files in a directory that has been selected.  Then
lastly the fourth pane is for viewing a table of versions of a single file
that has been selected from the file table.

<p>The version browser accomplishes the three restore steps differently.

<p>To select jobs and populate the directory tree, press the refresh button.
The job table contains selected jobs.  The selection criterion of the three
dropdowns and the two limits are used as the filtering criterion for
populating the job table the first time the refresh button is pushed.
After the refresh button has been pushed, the job table has check marks that
can selects and unselects jobs.  Re-pressing the refresh button does one of two
things.  What occurs is dependent on if the controls in the bottom pane 
display the same data as the previous time the refresh button was pressed.  If
changed the jobs table is repopulated from the selection criterion.  If
unchanged any jobs that have been unchecked are excluded from the 
process of selecting directories, files and versions.  The directory tree does get
repopulated when the refresh button is pushed.  There is a text label underneath the
refresh button to inform the user as to which occurs when refresh is pressed.

<p>The user can browse the directory tree and click on a directory folder which
then populates the file table with the files that are contained in the
selected directory path.  Selecting or unselecting a directory does also select or
unselect all files and all directories in the tree hierarchy beneath it.  If
there are any exceptions already selected beneath that directory, those
exceptions do get deleted.

<p>With the file table populated, the user can unselect a file in a selected 
directory and also select a file in an unselected directory.

<p>With a file selected the version table populates with all the instances
a file has been written to tape.  The user can choose a specific version of a
file for restore and override the default which is to restore the most recent
version. 

<p>Pressing the restore button initiates a procedure preparing to
perform the restore of the requested files.  The same Restore Run interface
that was the third step in the standard restore is then displayed.  It
allows the user to instruct the bacula server of the details of what host
and what path to restore the files to.  This part of the restore does take control
of the connection to the server and does not allow any other communication
to the server by the other interfaces.

<p>There are two progress bars that appear when refreshing or after pressing
Restore.  These indicate to the user the time it may take to complete any tasks
that could take a long time period.

<h2>A Version Browser Limitation</h2>

There is an important limitation of the version browser.  If a fileset
specifically points to a file instead of a directory that contains files, it
will not be seen in the version browser.  This is due to the way that the
version browser searches for directories first, then for files contained in
those directories.  A common example is with the catalog job.
It by default points directly to one file created in a databse dump.

<h2>Version Browser Performance</h2>

<p>If you have used the version browser with a large database, you may have
noticed that the performance can begin to be quite slow.  A way to improve the
response time of the database server is to add indexes that will assist a 
couple of the specific queries that are made.

<p>If you have sqlite and would be willing to test out the creation of these
indexes to see if they work, please let me know the commands.

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